Times Square scare done on purpose?
jealous husband brutally stabbed his wife to death inside the Queens salon where she worked, then lay on top of her lifeless body, weeping, as police dragged him away, cops and witnesses said Wednesday.
The 35-year-old woman, identified by friends and police sources as Iris Rodriguez, was working inside the Tu S’tilo Salon and Spa on 37th Ave. by 93rd St. in Jackson Heights at about 7 p.m. when her husband attacked her, cops said.
He stabbed her several times in the chest as her horrified co-workers watched, police said. Video obtained by the Daily News shows her attacker, dressed in a torn green shirt, lying on top of her and embracing her, a pool of blood congealing underneath them as he speaks softly to her.
“Everyone can see!” a woman yells off-screen, right before police enter the salon.
“Move out of the way, move out of the way,” one officer says. “Anyone who saw anything, stay here.”
“Dios mio!” a woman yells, just as the officers drag him off of her by his shirt.
Medics rushed her to Elmhurst Hospital Center, but she couldn’t be saved.
Rodriguez and her husband split after about four years of marriage in January, but he became jealous when he saw her talking with other men, said one of her friends, who only gave her first name, Rosa. After they separated, he started calling her cell phone.
“She said that he was aggressive, and she was a little scared, but never enough to think this [would happen],” Rosa said. “She said he wanted her to live with him, but she said she didn’t want to be with him. She said she didn’t want him to know where she lived.
“Such a good person she was,” Rosa said, wiping away tears after learning Rodriguez died in the hospital. “A really good mother. She loved her children. She would do everything for them.”
Rodriguez, who worked on hair and make-up at the salon, is survived by two young sons, one 8 years old and the other a toddler, Rosa said.
“She was a magnificent person. None of us could think this would happen, not [even] her,” Rosa said.
Cops took her 39-yearold attacker into custody. He also went to Elmhurst Hospital with a cut on his arm.
The husband’s name has not been released, and charges are pending, cops said. A backfiring motorcycle sent Times Square into a panic Tuesday night, and now police are investigating whether the booming sound was purposely made to incite fear.
“It would be unconscionable in this day and age for someone to do something like that,” said NYPD Chief of CounterA terrorism James Waters. “It seems to be a bridge too far, but our detectives are good at finding that out.”
Nine people were injured and six were hospitalized when one motorcycle in a pack of six backfired while turning from Eighth Ave. onto 42nd St. just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday, police said.
“One or more of the cops knew right away that this was motorcycles,” Water explained. “But to the untrained ear of civilians and tourists transiting through Times Square with El Paso and Dayton on their minds, they ran.”
Scared people, thinking there was an active shooter, rushed into Broadway theaters looking for safe havens, briefly interrupting shows like “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Even though it was a false alarm, the public reacted they way should have, according to Waters.
“They did everything we plead them to do — run,” he said. “If they can’t run, we ask them to hide, and if they can’t hide, we ask them to fight as if their lives depended on it.”
The NYPD has shared this tactic with people in the hotel and theater businesses, Waters said.
Scores of cops ran to the sound before they were told that it was a motorcycle backfire. They checked out the situation and calmed panicked pedestrians, he said.
“The response by the cops were nothing short of outstanding,” Waters said. “It was a difficult couple of minutes.”